


Herein a blossom lies

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, F/M, Female Friendship, Flowers, Marriage, Nurses, Post-Canon, Romance, calf's foot jelly, minister's wife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 07:39:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11504769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: He was hers alone at this hour, in this way, unimaginable to anyone else.





	Herein a blossom lies

“You’re like a lily, a pink lily in a garden,” Henry murmured. 

They had retired early, both fatigued by long hours at the hospital, the wards full of men as it seemed they always had been, always would be, wards Emma could no longer remember as the ladies’ parlor or the gentlemen’s lounge full of sweet blue pipe smoke. Once, a minister’s wife would have been expected to confine herself to calling on parishioners with jars of calf’s foot jelly or beef broth and arranging the flowers for the altar-piece, but the War had changed everything and the need was still so great and Henry’s parish the boys in the narrow beds, that Dr. Foster had not made any fuss at all about Emma continuing on as a nurse after her marriage. He had asked, begged her really, not to let Mary know how overwhelmed they had become, and because she shared his fear that his wife and her friend, still too frail from her illness except for her will and her intellect, would devise a way to return to the work she had done before, even without the title of Head Nurse, she had agreed. Emma suspected Mary had some idea of the truth but that the efforts she made with Miss Jenkins for the contraband and those she took to care for Dr. Foster, who had gone nearly entirely grey over the past six months, taxed her enough that she did not ask questions Emma could not answer; in turn, Emma did not refuse the prettily prepared baskets of fresh biscuit and raspberry jam, the housewife full of needles, the bottle of brandy finer than any cordial an Alexandrian matron could distill, whatever token or thoughtful talisman Mary could conjure up and press into Emma’s hands before she ended her call and went home to the unprepossessing house she and Henry shared, a far cry from her own girlhood home and even from the gracious townhouse Dr. Foster had leased for Mary on Prince Street. She did not envy her friend any material comfort, not even the blessing of a fresh cup of China tea in a Wedgwood cup the pale lavender of a Virginia dawn, not when she lay in Henry’s arms, contented in every way except that she wanted to hear him say something more.

“I would bring you an armful of lilies, just so I could see that the petals are just like your skin, I’d take every last one from the garden and shower you with them, if I could,” he went on, running his hand down her arm, from the curve of her shoulder beneath the muslin sleeve to her wrist, long, slow strokes that made Emma sigh with pleasure and made Henry’s voice color with a smile before it became a little rougher.

“I can’t give you what you deserve, can’t care for you as I should, as Foster does for Mary, I’m sorry, Emma,” he said. She missed the lilies already, pale pink and purely happy, but she valued his honesty even as she rued his misapprehension. For a man of ideals, she’d found he was curiously taken with the earthly realm or what he thought she needed of it. She had been insulted at first but had spoken about it with Mary first and then Belinda and had taken their respective perspective and wisdom to heart. "He needs reminding of how large your soul is and your mind," Mary had said with her familiar twinkle, "now that he has found our how small your hand is when it wears his ring." "He’s young and foolish, a full helpin’ of each," Belinda had muttered, "but time’ll fix the first and you might t’other, with the Lord’s help." 

“I think I know what I deserve, Mr. Hopkins, and I’ll be sure to tell you if I’m wanting anything,” she said, smart as she might have been to one of the Wyatt brothers if he’d tried to steal a kiss at a ball, soft as she once had been with Frank and then never again, desirous as she had only ever been with her husband. Now he sighed with it, with her wife’s frank and modest affections and the way she pressed herself closer to him, and she breathed it in before she spoke again. 

“Someday, I’d like that garden and those lilies. The pink ones and some white, like splashes of moonlight, and I’ll keep them in that jug so we can have the scent in our room, all night. Someday, Henry. Someday will be soon enough for the lilies and anything else you can think of if you’ll only just kiss me now, a kiss for every lily you want to give me,” she said, satisfied to be stopped by his mouth, the delicious, fearless heat of it, the roughness of his unshaven cheek against hers and the gentleness of his hand at her waist as he grasped her nightdress to pull it away, to caress her more ardently. She knew something of how dearly Mary was loved by her husband, the way his eyes went to her and only rested when he had found her, the physical comforts he plied her with and the respect of his attention, unreserved and equal for all that she was a woman and his wedded wife. Emma had a sense of how beloved Mary was in every regard, for her dark eyes and her deft hands, for the beauty that her illness could not ruin but only veil, and her spirit which his aspirations satisfied, even when he failed. She knew all that and she knew how Henry felt above her, how he asked her to read his sermon before he gave it, how he never complained if dinner was unbuttered day-old biscuit or chicken and dumplings, the strength he brought to their every coupling and the weakness he was not ashamed to show her, gasping in her arms in completion or a nightmare. She knew someday would come and that it would feel like today, that tonight would be a memory even sweeter for the remembrance, that the idea of a pink lily was all that was needed and everything she would ever want.

**Author's Note:**

> There was some virtual gnashing of teeth over a set of screenshots from the big Emma-Henry pre-murder-kiss on Tumblr with hashtags about how sad it was that the show is over and that we'll never get closure, might-have-beens and what-have-you and so I wrote this, to soothe and (I hope) delight and because my own garden is full of pink lilies.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson. I don't know if Frank Stringfellow is dead or alive; like this Emma, I don't much care. I tried to give equal time to Phoster and Emmry fans and to all of us who loved Mary and Emma's friendship and wanted Belinda to always have the last word.


End file.
